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The Yukon's Northern Lights

01

Jun

The Yukon's Northern Lights

Submitted by Phil

Image processing has got nothing on editing timelapse videos when it comes to consuming your life's spare moments! Especially if the timelapse involve rapidly changing aurora and day-night twilight transitions captured in challenging circumstances. But after a hectic summer, I have finally made time to get back to the footage from my Yukon Aurora Adventures and produce video #3. Originally conceived as a seven minute version which included some 'behind the scenes' type sequences, I was prompted to create this short two minute version first from the best of my Yukon footage for the 2013 David Malin astrophotography awards.

The video itself opens with a short twilight sequence at Kluane Lake, captured with Fred Vanderhaven's timelapse exposure controller. This was the first night I had used the controller out on location and it was having issues in the extreme cold weather so I wasn't sure how well the sequence would work but it has turned out nice (albeit with a lot of time consuming editing work). The first aurora sequence is also at Kluane Lake, before switching to a clip captured in my first week in the Yukon, right outside the beautiful house of Andrea and Florian Lemphers who hosted me for nine weeks in their lodge on Shallow Bay, Lake Laberge, north of the Yukon capital Whitehorse.

The dramatic sequence between the trees and with the moonrise is from just up the Klondike Highway, further north up Lake Laberge.

The reflections are in just about the only open water I found in nine weeks - a deep water outlet from Fish Lake near Whitehorse. When it's as cold as -40 degrees, everything else is frozen solid, to quite a great depth. The two main clips are from two of the true aurora storms I experienced, the first on the 18th February again at home at Shallow Bay and the second near the end of the trip on 15th March 2012 from way up north on the Dempster Highway in Tombstone Park, looking over the Ogilvie Mountains.

For the other big aurora on 14th February 2012, check out my Valentine's Aurora video. The movie then calms down with two quiet auroral bands in the north and moonset as captured from Annie Lake Rd, south of Whitehorse, and one of the more photogenic of the locations I visited.

The last two clips of the impressive Alaskan mountain range is taken from the road between Haines Junction and Haines, Alaska. Unfortunately as these mountains are to the south, I never saw any aurora over them. But they made for a very nice morning twilight and sunrise scene!